The West Central Florida Group, Inc.

A non-profit, 501(c)(3) organization to promote Amateur Radio and Emergency Communications on Florida's West Coast

NI4CE-B UHF D-Star Digital Voice Repeater

http://dstar.ni4ce.org is the place for
all NI4CE D-Star information, links and FAQ's.

The NI4CE B DV Repeater at 444.425 went live on the air June 14th, 2008. The repeater operates at our Riverview, FL site at 880ft above sea level (805ft above ground level). There is no coax loss as the repeater is platform mounted in a environmentally controlled cabinet only feet from the antennas on the tower itself. Photos of the installation at 805ft are online in our photo album. The system runs on custom designed TX/RX T-Pass multicoupler & combiner system permitting the D-Star repeater and our 442.550 analog repeater to use the same antennas on the tower. You will need a D-Star digital voice radio to participate on this repeater. Additionally, this system is operated completely seperate from the analog NI4CE system, they are not linked. Feedback from users confirms the Longley-Rice 4/3 earth model shown below to be quite accurate.

The NI4CE-B repeater system is also internet gateway enabled. If you have already registered your callsign elsewhere on another repeater's gateway, you are already able to use our gateway.

To setup your radio for the NI4CE-B gateway: program the frequency (444.425+), mode DV, and enter the callsign information as listed here:

  • MYCALL: your callsign (& ssid)
  • RPT1: NI4CE(space)(space)B
  • RPT2: NI4CE(space)(space)G
  • URCALL: CQCQCQ
The two spaces are important in RPT1 & RPT2.

If you have never registered your callsign on any other G2 gateway, you'll need to first register your callsign on the US Trust servers, which you can do by visiting https://dstar.ni4ce.org. That webpage's certificate is self-signed, you'll need to press OK when warned about it to continue. If you agree to our terms of usage and enter your information, you'll then need to wait to be authorized by us to continue. We'll e-mail you when we validate your request. You'll then need to log back in and setup your radio on the system. Info on how to do this will be in the message we send to you. If you do not understand this process, just drop us an e-mail and we'll help you thru the process best we can.

dstarcoveragemap
Repeater coverage legend: Yellow 50 watt mobile - Green 5 watt HT

Real time live information regarding recent usage of NI4CE B


Commonly asked questions and policies about NI4CE B operations

  • Registration is not mandatory to use a D-Star repeater. Simply put your callsign in mycall, and CQCQCQ in the urcall field on your radio. You do not need to register on the gateway to simply use the repeater as a local RF repeater as you would any analog repeater. Registration on the gateway is only required if you wish to participate in talking from one repeater to another over the internet or for your callsign to be seen on the D-Star users website.

  • In order for operators at other stations on distant repeaters to know you are calling thru a gateway, please use the following commonly accepted format: "(yourcall) (theircall or CQ) calling on (repeater you are on) port (B for UHF, C for VHF)". Here's a real example... "ki4swy kg4yzy calling on ni4ce port b". This will help other operators from answering you without knowing that they need to change the urcall in their radio be heard on the repeater you are on.

  • Arguably the most comprehensive explaination of callsign routing via gateway systems and catch-22 callsign pitfalls on D-Star repeaters is written by Greg Sarratt W4OZK. Once you understand how callsign routing works, the fastest way to program your radio to talk on other distant repeaters is the D-Star Calculator website. It's a very easy to use interface to help you determine what to put in your radio's callsign fields based on current on the air repeaters.

  • NI4CE B participates in the weekly Florida Digital Voice Net on the REF004BL, every Wednesday from 9pm-10pm local time. Technical questions are answered, and discussions on how to grow the usage of D-Star in Florida are common topics. During the net, we automatically link directly to the reflector using dplus, so just use CQCQCQ in your radio's urcall field during the net.

  • The gateway has dplus running on it for DV Dongle users to connect to the system. We do not, however, allow operator over the air dplus remote linking requests. Only control operators can link and unlink the entire system from reflectors and other gateways. You can use NI4CE(space)(space)E in your RPT1 field and the gateway will play back your transmission so you can verify how the repeater is hearing you.

  • We kindly ask that you do not transfer files thru the repeater to keep the system available for its primary function, which is that of voice communication. Chat (short messages) piggy backed with your transmissions are fine to exchange, just not full file transfers that take longer periods of time on air.

  • All traffic on the NI4CE B repeater is logged and archived for trustee FCC part 97 compliance purposes.


    Questions and suggestions regarding the D-Star system should be sent to our technical committee.

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